by I flew down to Timaru on Friday. Ascending over Wellington, seeing the vast Southern Alps from 23,000 feet, and flying down the coast to almost skid over Temuka where I spent about a year of my life. It all made me feel good inside. Mum picked me up from the airport and within half an hour I was at my parents’ place which looked even more beautiful than it normally does in the springtime. They have probably a dozen fruit trees – apples, plums, plumcots, Black Boy peaches, you name it. They’ll even get a good crop of figs this year.
On Saturday some people came over to look at some of Dad’s paintings. They were doing a tour of gardens around Geraldine and the paintings were just a bonus. Dad said they were tyre kickers who would never buy. Their car pulled up and Dad dealt with them. Mum and I stayed in the kitchen. Mum said, “They won’t believe that an artist could live in a house like this.” I felt a bit sick. Jeez Mum, everything is wrong with that sentence. Why do you have to live vicariously through Dad? (You’ve had a long teaching career that you can be extremely proud of.) And why are you so concerned about your image? The next minute the tyre kickers were taking photos. “Oh no, they’re taking photos of the rhododendrons! But there are so many weeds!” This was code for “Please keep taking photos! Lots and lots of them!” They did buy a painting, of the lovely Central Otago village of Ophir. I was there last year, between Christmas and New Year, when he took the photo. It was a stunning evening. I loved visiting that part of the country; I’d never been there before.
When I was growing up, Mum had a spinning wheel, a guitar, she used to run, she spent time in the garden because she enjoyed it, she even attended maths classes in the evenings and taught me what she learned. Now the golf club is where it’s at. She spends a lot of time in the garden still, but it’s a very different place to the one in the UK. I love 2015 Mum so much, but I wish I could get 1987 Mum back.
